Saddam Hussein's trial in Baghdad has heard tapes purporting to show the former dictator approving the uprooting of farms near the town of Dujail in retaliation for a 1982 assassination attempt.The crackdown, following an attack on Saddam's motorcade by members of the opposition Dawa party, also saw the execution of 148 Shia Muslim men and boys in the town 40 miles north of Baghdad.Saddam and his seven co-defendants could face the death penalty if convicted. The trial has continued haltingly since last October, and hearings today were further adjourned until May15.The tape played to the court showed a voice claimed to be that of one of the defendants, Taha Yassin Ramadan, saying that the levelling of farmland had been nearly finished and that landowners would be compensated.... http://www.guardian.co.uk

Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Israeli Jews should go back to the European countries from which they came. ``You made Europe unsafe for Jews,'' he said at a press conference. ``Allow them to go back to their own fatherlands,'' he said in a speech about the consequences of World War Two, according to a translation carried live by Bloomberg Television. ``You have created a problem which you should solve yourself.'' He said the creation of Israel had resulted in the persecution of the Palestinian people. Ahmadinejad earlier this month announced his country had enriched uranium sufficiently to produce nuclear-reactor fuel. Iran is now ``some years away'' from developing a nuclear bomb, Thomas Fingar, deputy U.S. director of national intelligence, said on April 13. ...http://quote.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000087&sid=aEZCovv8wJ7g&refer=home

Residents of the northern city of Darwin were preparing Monday for the onslaught of a severe tropical cyclone forecast to be one of the worst-ever storms to hit Australia.Fishermen were securing their boats and a uranium mine halted operations as Category-five cyclone Monica, packing winds of up to 217 mph, hovered around 275 miles northeast of Darwin on Monday afternoon, lashing sparsely populated islands off Australia's Northern Territory, according to the national Bureau of Meteorology. Senior forecaster Gordon Jackson said the storm was "quite possibly" the worst cyclone to hit Australia more powerful than even Cyclone Tracy, which struck Darwin on Christmas Eve 1974, leveling the city and killing 65 people. "It's definitely the most intense to hit the Northern Territory," Jackson said. "It's worse than Tracy because it's a category-five whereas Tracy was a category-four." Since Cyclone Tracy hit, Darwin has been rebuilt with homes intended to be strong enough to ...http://www.usatoday.com/weather/storms/2006-04-24-cyclone-monica_x.htm

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas sent a sharp reminder to Hamas on Monday he had the power to dissolve the new government, but said he did not want to do so and would give the group more time to embrace peacemaking. "Hamas has to change some of its political attitudes. Let's wait a while and see if it will change," Abbas told Turkish CNN. Shunned by the United States and the European Union for refusing to renounce violence and accept the pursuit of peace with Israel, the Hamas-led Palestinian Authority has been struggling for nearly a month to secure funds to pay overdue salaries to 165,000 government workers. Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, speaking in Gaza, said funds collected by the Arab League in Cairo now totaled "maybe" $90 million and that discussions were under way to bring that money quickly into the Authority. ...http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=1882926

Pentagon reconstruction officials are privately complaining that the special inspector general for Iraq is drafting error-prone reports and hampering their work in Iraq, according to defense officials. But the office of Stuart W. Bowen Jr., the White House-appointed special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, rejects the complaints, saying Mr. Bowen issues accurate reports and solid advice. Mr. Bowen is generally hailed in the press and in Congress as the man who has brought oversight to a $24 billion program of U.S. taxpayer funds that at times lacked proper supervision and accountability. Mr. Bowen, a lawyer and former aide to President Bush, separately investigated the spending of Iraq oil money and found significant mismanagement and fraud. But within the Pentagon and among some defense officials in Iraq, Mr. Bowen's staff is viewed as inaccurate and meddlesome at times, according to interviews with defense officials and e-mails between Army Project and ...http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20060424-122054-2410r.htm

The coalition of Italy’s incoming prime minister was already showing signs of fraying Sunday, with the head of a tiny party saying he would stay out of the government.It could be a Herculean task for Romano Prodi to hold together a coalition that includes mainstream leftists, communists, Catholics and secular radicals.The center-left Prodi, however, vowed to govern for a full, five-year parliamentary term. “We will stay united, and we will stay so for five years,” Prodi told reporters outside his home in Bologna.An appeals court officially confirmed Prodi’s electoral victory on Saturday when it certified his narrow, two-seat Senate majority....http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12441401/from/RSS/